NASA Moon Toilet: You Can Win Rs 27 Lakh For Designing A Lunar Loo For Astronauts

As NASA aims to set up a permanent base on the Moon, it has asked for help around the world in one particularly important matter.

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The US space agency is seeking design innovations for a lunar loo. That is exactly what the words predict - a toilet on the moon.

Under NASA's Lunar Loo Challenge, inventors are being called upon to design a toilet that will work in the gravity of the moon. NASA is willing to offer rewards totalling to $35,000 (~Rs 26.5 lakh) for the winning design.

The challenge is unique as to date, such space toilets have been designed for microgravity, mostly within the space shuttles in space.

The International Space Station, for instance, employs a fan-based suction system for a toilet. At the time of the Apollo missions, this was just "a plastic bag which was taped to the buttocks to capture faeces."

NASA's lunar toilet design competition

NASA Lunar Loo Challenge (Image: NASA)

NASA is planning to set up a base on the moon by 2024 under its Artemis mission. The base will help conduct experiments on the lunar surface as well as act as a jump-off point for NASA¡¯s later missions to Mars.

The base is poised to have astronauts in it and considering astronauts have to attend nature¡¯s calls too, the lunar loo is one crucial aspect of NASA¡¯s mission.

A seemingly simple assumption on Earth can change to be a hard hitting reality outside our planet. Urine and faeces in space, for instance, does not go straight down into the toilet in space as there is no gravity.

On the moon, the story would be a bit different. WIth one-sixth of the gravity of the Earth, the excretion should go down but maybe not as fast as one would like.

That is about capturing the waste, a related issue that NASA wants to solve is the containment of this human waste and how, the facility will eventually be cleaned.

Specs for moon toilet

NASA Artemis Mission (Image: NASA)

NASA's Human Landing System (HLS) Program has started the NASA Lunar Loo challenge in a hope to ¡°attract radically new and different approaches to the problem of human waste capture and containment." The space agency has laid down some pre-requisitie for the same.

For instance, NASA says that the lunar toilet should not occupy more than 0.12 cubic meters (4.2 cubic feet) of space and should operate within a noise level of 60 decibels.

The toilet should be able to collect a litre of urine and 500 grams of faeces simultaneously, including in diarrhoea form. It should also be able to capture up to 114 grams of menstrual blood per crew per day. Bonus points will also be awarded to designs that can capture vomit without requiring the crew member to put his/her head in the toilet.

Since multiple astronauts will be using it over time, the toilet should be easy to clean and maintain, with a turnaround time of 5 minute or less between uses.

Once the astronauts are done, the lunar toilet system should be able to store the waste or somehow toss it outside the vehicle.

Prizes up for grabs

NASA has set August 17 as the deadline for the competition. Winner chosen from the entries before the date will receive $20,000 as a reward.

Second and third place winners will be handed out $10,000 and $5,000 respectively.